The present invention relates to headphones, fitting in the auricles of user's ears comfortably but hardly detached from the auricles.
The widespread of portable music players has brought rapid expansion of the market of headphones that are to be connected to the players.
There is a type of popular headphones, fitting in the auricles of user's ears (usually, referred to as an inner-ear type), which is light and portable.
Such headphones are roughly classified into: a type equipped with a cylindrical sound emitter provided as protruding from a headphone body and an ear piece attached to the sound emitter, the ear piece inserted into each external auditory canal of user's ears; and another type with a headphone body fit in each auricle of user's ears to emit sounds, with no components to be inserted into each external auditory canal.
The former type is referred to as a canal type, distinguished from the latter type.
Discussed below is the latter type, not the canal type, among the inner-ear type headphones.
The latter type headphones usually consist of: a pair of speaker units for converting electrical signals into sounds; a body having a housing with an external shape suitably fit in each auricle of user's ears, in which each speaker unit is installed; and a cord extended from the body to supply audio signals from an external device to the speaker units.
The latter type includes headphones equipped with elastic ear pads each having an inner space and provided at a section of a housing that touches the auricle of a user' ear, for protection of sound leakage and higher comfortableness when fit in the auricle.
Such latter type headphones, not the canal type, have to be held in the auricles of user's ears only with a housing with no such ear pieces to be inserted into the external auditory canals of the user's ears. However, how the latter type headphones, not the canal type, are comfortably and firmly fit in the auricles of the user's ears depends on his or her auricles' shape and size.
The latter type headphones equipped with elastic ear pads described above may be relatively comfortably fit in the auricles of user's ears. However, this type is still easily detached from the auricles when an external force to detach it is applied due to no means of engaging with the auricles.